Wednesday, October 20, 2010

I was commuting the other day on a route I don't normally use. It was my daughter's 12th birthday and we were going out to dinner in Lynnwood. I turned off of Hwy. 99 on to a quiet side street with a bike lane. With her mind on the mooshoo pork she was going to eat rather than the task at hand a lady turned right in front of me into a driveway. I had about 5 feet of room to slow down from about 16MPH while turning into a driveway and unsuccessfully avoiding the rear wheel of the car. I was not hurt, nor touched by the car.

I screamed all the words I could scream and then demanded her insurance info and started taking pictures of everything. This happened about 1/2 block from Harvy's bike shop in Lynnwood. I bought a cheap front wheel and went on my way.

I had just purchased a powertap hub and williams wheelset and had it paired with my garmin GPS the day before. Now at least half of the set is not round.

I am currently in negotiations with her insurance company about buying me a new front wheel and maybe more. I am taking it to get checked out today.

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

The Seattle City Council has put up an Ideascale site to gather ideas and feedback on various cost cutting measures for the 2011-12 budget. There are a number of anti-bike items that have been posted. Please consider voting "I disagree" on these items, and showing that there is strong support for continuing to make Seattle safe for cyclists.

Monday, October 4, 2010

Yup, that's me in the center of that pile — and yes I did cause the accident. It had just started to drizzle, and we had all taken this same corner at speed in previous laps. About 20 guys wrecked besides me... my wreck just made the biggest pile. I'm all banged up today, but I'd do it again to make VeloNews. :-)

The best part: my wife was standing at this section (where there were about 12 hairpin turns in a row) with both my kids and about 4-5 friends, and they were all yelling "Go Wide!" at the top of their lungs as I was coming into that corner (on the inside, doh!) It may have been too late to save myself from a fall —but— instead off paying attention to the corner, I was looking up at them as I came down the straight away, trying to yell above the crowd noise, "which corner?!" My wheels were off the ground before I got the words out. I actually might not have crashed if I had been paying more attention. Lesson learned - I'm totally ignoring my wife and my friends during races from now on.